Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump is “doing well” and recovering after a bullet fired by failed assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head,” former White House physician and current Congressman Ronny Jackson said in a statement issued Saturday.
“As reported and witnessed by the entire world, he sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear from a high-powered rifle used by the would be assassin,” wrote Jackson, (R-Texas), noting he examined Trump the night he was shot.
“The bullet track produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear,” Jackson wrote. “There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear.”
The swelling has since resolved, said Jackson, who thanked the medical staff who initially treated Trump at Butler Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania.
The letter comes a day after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the controversial former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downplayed Trump’s injuries as “superficial” and said the bullet “grazed his ear.”
“I don’t think there is much more to it,” Fauci said on Friday night.
Jackson said he met with Trump at the former President’s Bedminster, New Jersey estate the night of the shooting and has seen him every day since.
“As the former appointed physician to the President for President Donald J. Trump, I was naturally very concerned, as was the entire world, about his wellbeing after the assassination attempt on his life,” Jackson wrote.
Trump’s injured ear is still bleeding intermittently, “requiring a dressing to be in place,” Jackson added.
“Given the broad and blunt nature of the wound itself, no sutures were required.”